Bursting with projects, Shan Tam feels like it’s 1980s Hong Kong all over again

After producing movies for three decades, Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based Shan Tam is undertaking ever more projects in China.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Movie producer Shan Tam will fly to the Hong Kong Film Mart today, then on to Beijing. On a regular visit two weeks ago, she inhaled the Chinese capital’s worst-ever air pollution. Still, her business prospects were clear and appealing. They entailed wrapping the $13-million theatrical feature, Tale Of Three Cities, which she produced and Beijing-based Huayi Brothers Media funded.

“It was my first project that was 100-per-cent Chinese financed,” Tam said of a filming environment “where everything is possible and everything goes so fast.” Her many other projects began in hometown Hong Kong and then Vancouver, where she line-produced the 1989 action flick In The Line Of Duty IV. She also met and married writer-director Michael Parker and founded Maple Ridge Films as a local service provider for Hong Kong productions. In 1992, the two launched Holiday Pictures Ltd.

“Maple Ridge is like a nanny,” Tam said. “I get paid to look after another baby. But Holiday is my own baby that I spend all my energy and money to raise it.” There were paybacks, such as three Leo awards for Holiday’s 2000 Lunch With Charles. The return producers most value, though, was the $100 million US earned by another romantic comedy, the Maple Ridge $5-million co-production Finding Mr. Right.

Two real-life Mr. Rights, Matthew O’Connor and Tom Rowe, approached her regarding a Reunion Asia spinoff of their and Lisa Richardson’s Vancouver-based Reunion Pictures. With them, Tam has produced movies and three miniseries starring David Carradine, Brian Dennehy, Daryl Hannah and Ian Somerhalder in China’s enormous Hengdian World Studios, where dozens of projects shoot simultaneously. As for producing The Dragon Pearl, starring Sam Neill, she said the $20-million Australia/China picture’s working title, The Last Dragon, was scrapped “because the dragon is the symbol of China, so cannot be last.”

There’s no last in sight for Tam now. “I’m in solid discussion, not inquiries, for” — she counts on her fingers — “one, two, three, four, five productions, some to be shot in Malaysia.” Other projects are surfacing for L.A., Prague and Morocco. “It just feels like I am back in Hong Kong’s (late 1980s) golden age for film producers,” she said. “Now it’s the Chinese companies doing that.”

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ON TOP: Other restaurateurs waited months for Tuesday’s confirmation that the Aquilini Investment Group will acquire restaurateur Jack Evrensel’s Toptable Group. Asked if that entailed his Yaletown real-estate holdings, the ever-courtly (and canny) Evrensel said only unspecified property elsewhere was involved.

Missing from Toptable’s portfolio is a steak house, such as the fast-growing Glowbal chain has added. Meanwhile, the venerable Hy’s Encore soldiers on and Gotham will mark its 15th anniversary April 3. Others are owned by Northland Properties Corp. president Tom Gaglardi who, with fellow developer Ryan Beedie, unsuccessfully contested the Aquilinis for ownership of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team. Perhaps an Aquilini-owned steak house would offer the superb cheese that clan head Luigi brings from a mountain village near his Brescian hometown Travagliato, from which he arrived penniless in 1956.

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LAP OF LEXUS: Chopin preludes may be heard when a Yamaha grand piano arrives in the client lounge of Regency Lexus’s $12-million, 14,000-square-foot showroom on Burrard Street’s auto-dealer row. More important is what goes out of the month-old facility, namely the 660 vehicles general manager Izzam Ahamed, 34, plans to sell this year.

That’s a far cry from the 300 deals Izzam’s father, group president and Kenya-born polymer scientist Amir Ahamed, 66, wrote in recession-year 1983. He’d paid $200,000 for the shares of North Shore Datsun, then laid out $1.7 million for its site. The habit continued. Family firm Amiramalco Holdings Canada Ltd. now owns all of the multi-dealership Regency Auto Group’s lands and properties. They include 22-year-old Regency Lexus’s Burrard-at-Seventh site Amir acquired as five strata titles. “You can never find anything like this on Burrard,” he said, having rejected seeking rezoning for a site on Terminal Avenue. Recent Mercedes-Benz and Porsche dealerships there occupy a former Chrysler Canada site that was grandfather-zoned for auto retailing.

One block off Terminal, though, Regency recently opened a $12.5-million, 26,000-square-foot Toyota service facility on a 0.6-hectare site. In 2007, it acquired a nearby 0.4-hectare site to service Lexus vehicles.

The relationship with Lexus and parent Toyota began in 1988, when Amir bought Bill Docksteader Toyota, renamed it Kingsway Toyota and, in 1990, Regency Toyota. That followed him, wife Yasmin and sons Izzam and Aleem, now 31, figuring the Toys “R” Us sign should be Cars “R” Us.

“We played with the R, thought about Royal and Regal, and Regency it became,” said Amir, who once lived in British regency-resort town Brighton.

With no major building imminent, Regency will demolish part of its former Toyota service centre on Kingsway for an open-air pre-owned sales lot and 5,000-square-foot administration centre, where Aleem is director of operations and finance.

As for the latter, “Look after the customers and the profits will look after themselves,” Amir said.

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